Sunday, August 22, 2010

Making Americans Believe About Obama's Faith

Here is an excerpt from an article by Brad Knickerbocker discussing what it would take for Americans to be convinced of what the president's faith really is.
What will it take for President Obama to convince the world that he’s a Christian … or at least not a Muslim?

Teaching Baptist Sunday School like Jimmy Carter? Putting a “My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter” bumper sticker on Air Force One? Making a pilgrimage to Lourdes?

Day after day, the White House has to keep knocking down questions about the President’s faith – a major distraction when Obama would rather be cheer-leading the economy, stumping for Democrats facing tough reelection fights this fall, or just hanging out with Michelle and the girls on Martha’s Vineyard these waning days of summer.

The current flap stems from the Pew Research Center’s finding that the number of Americans who believe Obama is Muslim has swelled to 18 percent (including 34 percent of conservative Republicans).

Now, we would never agree with the headline on Joel Achenbach’s blog on the subject in the Washington Post: “Are Americans total numbskulls?” But as Achenbach points out, “Disinformation remains powerful and infectious, and … large elements of the country distrust the official story about anything.”

It gets worse. An earlier Harris Poll finds that “a quarter of Tea Party supporters believe he may be the Anti-Christ.”
The article also goes on to discuss Franklin Graham's recent comments about Obama and how they relate to other comments he has made regarding Islam, showing that Graham is a biased party. He also mentions similar problems other presidents had experienced.
In having to rebut charges that he’s a Muslim, Obama seems to be in good company. Abe Lincoln’s political opponents rumored that he was Roman Catholic, Franklin Roosevelt’s that he was secretly Jewish. There is still a sizable chunk of voters who would not vote for Mitt Romney for president because he’s Mormon – not a Christian religion, some theologians argue.
What is sad is that this non-issue is actually being discussed nationally

Why are people even questioning his faith? 

Who cares?

In my opinion, it is "news" like this that only paints the right as an group of intolerant religious zealots - I wish the studies would show that out of the percentage of Americans who believe Obama is a Muslim how many are Republican or conservative.  One could only hope that this information would help pursuade moderates from voting for the GOP's extremist candidates.

2 comments:

  1. Because this is a non issue, none of the standard proofs (like his Hawaiian birth certificate) will work. He would have to commit Teabuggery and do something insane, like attack Upf*ckistan and claim Jesus told him to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. If Obama was a Republican, he would make fun of the "birthers" or "faithers" directly, calling them "stupid," "idiotic," or even "retarded," and then state that his critics are a bunch of "crybabies."

    Sadly, this tactic seems to have been working for the right-wing - just look at Rush Limbaugh, or the idiots like Sharron Angle, DeMint, Bachmann, or any other teabag fear monger. Lets just hope the general electorate feel otherwise...

    ReplyDelete

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